The _Waterford Chronicle_ thus comments: “There will have gone, after the season is over, upwards of 3,000 people, from this country, by this port alone. Not to talk of the rearing of these people—the trouble and expense of bringing up a healthy man, woman, or child, and, especially, leaving out the irreparable loss to society, in this country, of their affections, hopes, and family ties—all, now, sundered and destroyed—not to talk of the countless living deaths of wholesale emigration from a feeling and warm-hearted mother country—the amount of capital taken by these 3,000 is immense. Assuming that each individual spends £10 in his passage, and before he settles, and that he has £10 more to establish himself, here is direct taking away, in hard cash, of £60,000 gone out of the bleeding pores of Ireland, to increase the misery which is left behind. We are in possession of facts which show that many cunning landlords are sending away their people yearly, but by degrees, and not in such a manner as to subject themselves to a ‘clearance notice.’ If this system be continued, we shall be tempted to give names. After these things, who will blame the people for outbreaks occasioned by famine? There is nothing plentiful in the land but ruin! Employment is scarce—money is scarce—the people are being thinned—farms are being consolidated—bullock land is progressing— “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where cows accumulate, and men decay.” For some long time there had been a conflict of opinion as to the merits of different sized gauges for railways. Brunel, the magnificent, advocated a width of seven feet, and practised it on the Great Western; others wished for something far more modest. Great was the wrangling over this “battle of the gauges,” and a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the matter. They gave in their Report on 30 May, and the question was settled by “An Act for regulating the Gauge of Railways” (9 and 10 Vic., c. 57—passed 18 Aug., 1846) by which it was settled that, in future, all Railway lines in England were to be 4 feet 8½ in. wide, and in Ireland, the width was to be 5 ft. 3 in. By the way, Railway surveyors were paid well, and almost everyone that had ever dragged a chain posed as a surveyor. As a sample—on 23 Ap. is reported the case of White _v._ Koe and Maun—where a witness said “Levellers are always well paid. I have received, before this £10 a mile, and I could level from seven to eight miles a day. These are not extraordinary terms. I had to find hands to help me. I had three men at 7s. a day each.”